“When you’re a confident group and you get behind, everybody is still sure they will get a win,” Eric Nystrom said. “If you aren’t confident and you aren’t sure, when that happens you’re screwed.”

Also very accurate in a North American, frying-pan-to-the-head sort of way.

But is this really it? Have the Wild, usually two steps forward and two steps back, morphed into not only a serious playoff contender but also a team that could be a problem for someone in the postseason? They have won six of their past seven. The two steps back have been absent from their most recent dance card.

Against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night, the team got off to a beautiful start. The players were flying over the ice, outdoing each other with creative passes and clearly enjoying the moment. Then in the third period, there was a stretch when everyone seemed so confused and disheartened that I thought they should have put Prozac in the water bottles at the bench.

This is all very confusing.

“I don’t think anything is different,” captain Mikko Koivu said. “I don’t think it’s about effort. It’s never been about trying more. You learn a lot as you go along. You realize you’ve got to stay sharp game in and game out.”

So the Wild have better focus?

“It seems like we are more consistent,” Backstrom said. “It used to be we’d be up by two goals and play one way. Down by a goal we change everything. Now it doesn’t matter. We keep playing our game.”

So the Wild are better prepared?

“We can’t afford to go on another skid,” Nystrom said. “And we’re not going to. When good things happen, you start to realize how. Everybody is on the same page. They do the right things. Then we get a timely goal that maybe we wouldn’t have gotten.”

So the Wild are meshing as a team?

“That’s the media, too,” Koivu said with a wry smile. “When you’re winning, everything seems better. That’s the way it goes.”

I think that was a shot.

The bottom line is that no one seems to be able to pinpoint what has fueled the Wild’s recent success. And I don’t think anyone really cares as long as it continues. The most prevalent explanation in the dressing room, though, is that the players are more confident and there is better esprit de corps. But I’ve always found those things too intangible to really be taken seriously.

“That’s because you don’t play,” Nystrom said.

I’m pretty sure that was a shot.

My theory: They are experiencing shorter in-game meltdowns. Previously, those meltdowns might stretch an entire period and doom the team to a loss. Now, they seem able to stop the bleeding before total disaster sets in. And they are stopping the bleeding by applying a hot goaltender.

Jose Theodore lifted them from their third-period depression Thursday night. He held the Avalanche off the score sheet during a four-minute penalty that featured some of the worst penalty killing in modern hockey history. But Theodore came through. Then the mood changed.

You’ve seen the TV commercial where the depressed guy peeks out the curtains at the outside world? Then he takes a pill and next thing we know he’s out there having a barbecue with the neighbors. Theodore was the Wild’s antidepressant. Backstrom also acts as the Wild’s magic pill. They’ve both been good all along. But now they are playing their best when the team is at its worst.

It’s also important to note that the Wild have shown signs of maturity and cohesiveness. The players are, shall we say, sticking to their knitting, with each filling his role without trying to be something he isn’t. Defensemen, for example, are more prudent about joining the rush. Forwards know when it’s best to try to create and when it’s best to just dump it in. All of those better decisions lead to better results.

I don’t know how long it will continue. Maybe it ends tonight against Phoenix or maybe it lasts for the rest of the season. Then there’s the possibility that maybe their win streak is the result of pure, dumb luck. They did get plenty of fortuitous bounces against Colorado.

“You need the bounces,” Backstrom said. “But to get them, you have to work hard.”

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